The Muppet Movie (1979) is a Southern-Fried Culinary Nightmare

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The Muppets have been in the news recently, mostly because Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t know how anything works.

There is one person, though, who actually tried to cancel the Muppets. One person whose scheme would’ve permanently derailed the gang’s origin story and prevented this delightful film and television franchise from existing. (And it isn’t Nancy Pelosi.)

That would be Doc Hopper, proprietor of a chain of frog legs restaurants.

The most memorable moments of The Muppet Movie are the joyful ones. Kermit the Frog and Fozzy Bear leave their small town behind to become movie stars, and they pick up new friends all along the road to Hollywood. Then there are the songs, like the jovial “Movin’ Right Along” or the unforgettably pure “Rainbow Connection”, and the clever meta-humor that the Muppets often lean into, evidenced here when characters reference the script of the film they’re actually in.

But The Muppet Movie is also terrifying, especially if you are a frog. Kermit isn’t just trying to make it in show business—he’s trying to escape a band of deranged assassins. (You know, kids stuff.)

Doc Hopper’s intentions seem fair at first. He solicits Kermit as a business partner of sorts who would be the star of his restaurant’s commercials, the latest of which Kermit calls “the most appalling, disgusting, revolting thing [he’s] ever seen” (and he doesn’t mean the production quality). But as Kermit and the gang continue to evade him, Hopper quickly turns to wily madmen bent on not simply capturing but murdering Kermit.

Let’s ignore the preposterous concept of a fast-food frog legs franchise. (I’ve lived in the South all my life and I don’t think I’ve seen frog legs on a restaurant menu more than two or three times.) But let’s not ignore the deeply depraved history of American restaurant mascots.

I’m not talking about clowns or kings or little girls. I’m not even talking about small dogs hawking tacos or large rats slicing up pizzas. I’m talking about the animals cursed with the duty of trafficking their own flesh and blood. The fluffy white chickens wearing cowboy hats and the grinning pigs holdings forks and knives. The stuff we might find barbaric if we weren’t so used to it. (It’s not a coincidence, I think, that a pig and a chicken end up in Kermit’s crew.)

This is the grim fate that awaits Kermit should he fall behind.

It’s easy to see through Doc Hopper’s fiction. When he first spots Kermit, through the window of a bar called the El Sleezo Café (that serves frog legs, of course), he is undoubtedly zoning on that frog’s legs. Whether or not they would film some commercials together, Hopper wants to cook and serve Kermit—or perhaps fry him up for himself.

And the sinister extent of Hopper’s plan could go much, much deeper. If he’s ogling Kermit’s legs in such a way, why would he settle for making one meal out of this prime specimen? Would he lock Kermit in a dungeon and force him to constantly breed, thereby perpetually replicating his immaculate thigh genes? Would he go a step further and simply clone Kermit over and over? (Doc Hopper does know a mad scientist, so it’s not much of a stretch!)

Henson and company could’ve easily served us lighter fare. The struggles of making it as an outsider in Hollywood are a compelling narrative on their own, but the film really only scratches the surface of this plot. (Success comes shockingly easy to Kermit and his pals once they get there.)

Instead, the writers chose to put Kermit one wrong turn away from a fate worse than death. A fate that would’ve been appalling, disgusting, and revolting indeed.

The Muppet Movie is now streaming on Disney+ and is available to rent elsewhere.